Louis de Gouyon Matignon is a young French candidate in the EU elections and a self-proclaimed advocate of Roma and Traveller rights. He is profiled in the third part of a series looking at the French election candidates, by EurActiv France.

Although the situation today is very different from 30 years ago, countries in favour of deeper European integration, and those against, remain very much the same, says Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, fellow in Social Sciences at the Adam Smith Business School, in Glasgow.

The Dutch liberal politician and former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has launched a scathing attack against Guy Verhofstadt, who leads the liberal and pro-European ALDE group in the European Parliament, highlighting tensions within the liberal family ahead of next year's EU elections.

French liberal MEP Sylvie Goulard said that the German liberal FDP party, which failed to pass the 5% threshold for returning to the Bundestag in last Sunday’s elections, had been punished for “having lost their European commitment”.

The division of Europe between creditors and debtors should have never happened and in fact it would not have happened if the European interest, initially present in the draft of the Maastricht Treaty, had prevailed over the national interests, argues Joan Marc Simon.